Case Study: Abjjad achieves rapid scaling and cost savings with Microsoft Azure

The next Amazon for Arabic literature debuts with Microsoft’s help

Abjjad is an Amman‑based social network for readers and producers of Arabic e‑books that launched in 2012. Rapid user growth and limited startup revenue created performance bottlenecks and constrained the team’s plans as the site scaled toward a large Arabic‑speaking audience.

By joining Microsoft’s BizSpark program and migrating to Azure PaaS (using services like Web/Worker roles, SQL Database, Traffic Manager and storage alongside open‑source tools), Abjjad gained scalable infrastructure and reduced development costs. The site now supports about 180,000 members, ~300,000 page views per month, 60,000 book ratings and 11,000 reviews, plus improved sharing and mobile capabilities, and is pursuing publisher partnerships and subscription/monetization models to grow further.

Abjjad

Tamim Al Manaseer

CTO & Co-Founder